Wind Tunnel Facility

Made possible through the generous support of the Emil Buehler Perpetual Trust, the Wind Tunnel Facility is a $10M state-of-the-art, low-speed tunnel located on the research campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

Celebrating the legacy of Emil Buehler, whose many engineering and philanthropic contributions include the development of Mach 3 wind tunnel technology. The ERAU 6-by-4 feet Low-Speed Wind Tunnel (LSWT) is a large, state-of-the-art, closed-return type, atmospheric pressure, subsonic wind tunnel. The wind tunnel has a nominally rectangular test section of 6-by-4 feet with tapered corner fillets. The test section is 12 feet long. Flow speeds of up to 420 ft/s (286 m.p.h.) can be obtained in the test section with the 1,200 horsepower (0.9 MW) motor driving its 8-foot diameter fan. Measured turbulence levels in the test section are uniformly less than 0.2% of flow speed.

The test section is equipped with a comprehensive set of complementary instrumentation including a high-precision, 6-component balance mounted on an seismically isolated concrete foundation to accurately measure three forces and three moments, a full three-axis instrumentation traverse that can be used with appropriate probes to examine the entire test section, high resolution multi-channel pressure measurement systems, and advanced optical flow diagnostic systems including Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), all providing a set of powerful measurement capabilities.